"Oh, hang it all, don't let that matter," spoke Phil. "I dare say Sid won't be around. As soon as he gets in the woods or fields he's always after bugs or animals--he's a naturalist, you know."
"I should say so," agreed Tom. "Remember last fall how he went out after a picture of a fox, and got stuck in the bog, and how Zane caught him, all covered with mud, and thought poor Sid was a thief, and how we pretended we didn't know our own chum, when the proctor brought him to our room for identification? Remember that, Phil?"
"I should say I did. Well, that's probably what Sid will do this time, so Miss Harrison needn't worry about having to accept him as an escort, though for the life of me I can't understand what's up between her and Sid?" and Phil looked questioningly at his sister.
"We don't know, either," answered Ruth, "except that Mabel is very miserable over it."
"She can't be taking it very hard, when I see her off with that chump, Langridge," retorted Phil.
"Yes, I'm sorry she goes with him," retorted Madge Tyler. "But she won't listen to us. However, to change the subject--are we to go to the picnic, Ruth?"
"Oh, I guess so. How will we get there, Phil?"
"Tom and I will come for you, we'll go to the summer resort on the west shore of the lake, and row to the island. It will be sport. Now pray for good weather."
"And you boys pray that there aren't any snakes," added Miss Tyler.
"Nor ants in the butter," went on Ruth, as the boys bade the girls good-by.
"Where's my blue tie?" cried Tom, tumbling about the things on his bureau. "Have you seen it, Phil?"
"Well, I like your nerve! Yes, I used it as a shoe polishing rag," remarked Phil sarcastically. "You'll find it on the blue-tie hook, I should say. Why don't you look there."
"Yes. You're such an orderly chap," added Phil, as he looked at his chum's disordered side of the room, "that I supposed you had a hook for each tie."
"Oh, cut it out," advised Tom, making a perfect shower with a rainbow effect of colored silks, as he looked in vain for the blue article of adornment.
"I don't know where in blazes your blue tie is," went on Phil, as he gazed with a puzzled air into a box on his dresser; "but I'd like to know where my garnet cuff buttons are. Have you been sporting 'em, Sid?"